


With Inexorable Tread

by magnificentbastards



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, necessity and justice and republicanism oh my, revolutionary ideology, revolutionary violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 01:00:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/680893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magnificentbastards/pseuds/magnificentbastards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Enjolras will act as the people’s justice, will enact it personally: he has always known it, and now it comes true; and the false justice of the despot king will fall beneath his own hands.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Inexorable Tread

**Author's Note:**

> drabble written for the Les Mis kink meme (the prompt was for 'Enjolras beating someone up, preferably Javert', which is very much within my field of interest). the title is from a Saint-Just quote -- _it is time that we labored for the happiness of the people. legislators who are to bring light and order into the world must pursue their course with inexorable tread, fearless and unswerving as the sun,_ if you want the whole thing.

It is and ever has been the position of the oppressors and their blinkered and blinded servants to denounce the true justice of the people; and it is, and ever will be, the ultimate fate of the people’s justice to triumph.

Enjolras breathes in, braces his feet apart on the dusty floorboards, sets his shoulders straight, and sends the baton swinging down hard into the Inspector’s head.

When he does – when the muscle stretches and burns in his shoulder and the momentum of his swing brings his arm down as though it’s a hammer as heavy as himself that he holds – it is as if the moment of perfect uninterrupted stillness that surrounded him for a lengthy heartbeat before he moved is broken by the baton’s strike. The serenity of absolute knowledge blurs at the edges like fog. All the sounds and sights and smells of the wrecked café clamour to crowd back into his head: the shouts of the men behind him, the floorboards and walls scratched by hastily removed furniture, the ever-present scent of gunpowder and metal and wax and sweat, overpowering the lingering too-familiar coffee and liquor smell of the place.

The baton misses. Javert has grabbed Grantaire by the collar (and whose foolish idea was it to have _Grantaire_ restrain the prisoner, the man’s probably still inebriated) and thrown him bodily aside toward the wall, dodging the strike as it falls so that the dull thud of wood on flesh comes from the baton connecting with his shoulder, not his head.

Enjolras does not need to give orders, not this far into the implementation of all their plans, when the others act like extensions of his will: Courfeyrac hauls Grantaire upright and out of the way while Combeferre locks all the remaining doors and hefts the bayonet off his shoulder. Enjolras can devote his attention to Inspector Javert, the great sturdy face of the King’s Law with his left arm hanging limp and loose and useless by his side, his bloody teeth bared like those of a caged animal.

Enjolras will act as the people’s justice, will enact it personally: he has always known it, and now it comes true; and the false justice of the despot king will fall beneath his own hands.

The side of his face is still hot and tingling from Javert’s punch, and his fingers ache where they’re curled around the base of the baton. No matter: as Javert pulls back his fist Enjolras swings the baton round to connect with the upper half of Javert’s bad arm. The hit sends shudders up his arm, nearly enough to numb his wrist – Javert’s grunt of pain is almost a yell, but he does not stop moving at that. As Enjolras is stepping back, pulling his arm away, Javert’s knee is all at once driving itself hard into his stomach.

He doubles over, his spare hand clutching his stomach, choking and gasping for breath. At the side of the room, he can see Combeferre and Grantaire moving forwards; he’ll use them later, he knows, but not yet, and so when he forces himself to straighten his back he brings the baton snapping upwards with him. It slams at an angle into Javert’s collarbone with an audible crack, and for that all the pain in Enjolras’ torso is worth it.

The colour drains entirely from Javert’s face. Enjolras knows precisely what to do; that atmosphere of perfect serenity takes hold of the room again, the past and present and posterity pressing on him from all sides.

He wraps his hands around Javert’s neck and kicks Javert’s legs out from under him, bearing them both to the ground.

His Majesty’s Inspector and traitor to the people of France is not a small man, and the thud he makes when he hits the filthy floorboards of the café seems to shake the plaster off the walls. Enjolras watches Javert’s face turn red, feels the frantic leaping of the pulse under his thumbs as he digs his fingers into the skin of Javert’s throat. When Javert struggles Enjolras shoves his knee into the injured arm and the likely broken collarbone, and if Javert could make any noise with Enjolras cutting off his air he’d certainly be yelling.

The corrupted law of the despot brings force with it, but it holds no monopoly on violence. The tools of the oppressive regime can be used by the righteous to take down the regime itself.

“Courfeyrac,” says Enjolras, his voice as steady as it has ever been, “bring rope directly. As much as we need.”

The force of necessity is not one for men to underestimate -- even under the knowledge that it holds sway only during the earthquake of revolution, even in the certainty that violence, necessary or otherwise, will join poverty and ignorance and hatred in the annals of old world horrors after victory.

Enjolras pulls a hand away, grasps the handle of the dropped baton, and brings it down on the top of Javert’s head.

This time he does not miss. 

\--


End file.
